I personally find Pattern Making demands a fair bit of logical brainstorming.
I can spend hours and hours trying to figure out a pattern for an interesting garment I may have seen or an illustrated design and working out the details that lend it its exact shape, contour and fall.
I love complex architectural and geometric shapes that weave in and out and my designs tend to reflect that strongly which requires me to spend that extra bit of time figuring out where to slash, take in, blend and pivot. Hehe, it gets frustrating at times but working it out in your head and then on paper is tremendously satisfying. Although, as mentioned before a combination of patternmaking and moulage(draping) aids the creative process best.

Then again the basic blocks that you use for creating your pattern often determine the kind of fit the finished pattern will result in. Different design houses may have slight differences in the blocks they use according to the fits they want. Ofcourse, your skills improve with time and you know better how to adjust and fit your patterns, and spend less timeleafing through pages of Helen Joseph Armstrong :p which by the way, is excellent to begin with and I owe a lot of my basics to.

Its a little disappointing and restricting that most designers in my country choose to experiment with embellishments and fabric alone rather than shapes,silhouettes and patterns since the largely traditional populace is a little slow and reluctant on the bold/daring fashion uptake.

Yes, I'm aware that was a looong first post and applaud your attempts to have sat through it without dozing off. More to follow as and when my rogue brainfingers take over the keyboard.

perfecting the fit, the design, with the patterns... it's a great challenge,
for me, especially for clients who want made-to-measure.
i find it interesting discovering and to work for very particular body types.

time is a huge factor in this line though
which is another thing to tackle. i have to work fast and well

Danke schön BetteT and Gius. Always a pleasure to be part of an interesting conversation.

Gotta agree about efficient time management though, its something I've had to learn the hard way. My profs in college would constantly remind us and stress on its importance. So much so, late submissions were often not accepted or marked with lower grades. But that applies to almost every aspect and stage of the design process. Anything last minute and rushed can results in clumsy errors that WILL be frowned upon when you're working in a highly professional environment. Specially within the confines of a time-line and there's clients, vendors, suppliers and a gazillion other things besides to keep track of or work in tandem with.

I have a very general question. If I had a design I wanted to produce and needed a pattern maker how much would I expect to pay?

I know there are a lot of variables so let's say...

A very complicated gown?

A Leather Jacket?

A pair of Jeans?

Also let's say the pattern maker is located in the garment district in Manhattan.

This is not something that I actually want to accomplish I just need some very general answers for a discussion I'm having.

A "between this price and this price" would be great. I do realize that there a so many factors and questions the pattern maker would need answered to actually accomplish there task but I just need a very general answer from someone who has more knowledge in this subject than me.

I never thought of that... Math! Can fashion and math co-exist? But... But... I suck at math

Anyway, I say don't choose a career based on what's currently more in demand (trends do change- especially in fashion). Go for what's in your gut, what drives you and gives you pleasure, because ultimately no matter what you decide, if you want to succeed, you'll face many challenges, responsibilities, and just plain ol work... in such a competitive industry, you must be motivated beyond money.

I'm terrible at math too but I taught myself pattern making using Connie AMaden Crawfords book Patternmaking made easy, don't let poor math skills deter you. If you want to make the clothes you design and you have to use patternmaking to do it, you'll see that the math isn't really a road block, it may still be something you'd rather not deal with when you're grading, but it's mostly geometry type math, you know shapes. Just write your numbers down when you measure, don't leave anything to memory, and just re-check your measurements ever so often, make and keep charts of standard measurements and so on. Aside from that once you get started really drafting you'll realize the 'math' isn't really that much of a problem.